


Amen, Amen, Amen

by raving_liberal



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Cars, Character Study, Dean Winchester Loves The Impala, Engines, Fixing Cars Is A Love Language, Gen, Love Languages, POV Impala (Supernatural), Religious Imagery, The Impala (Supernatural), Unconventional Modes Of Prayer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-11-28 06:08:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20961746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raving_liberal/pseuds/raving_liberal
Summary: She was born with a good heart. A strong heart. Thus sayeth the Lord.





	Amen, Amen, Amen

She was born with a good heart. A strong heart. Chevy’s 327 engine, the living legend “mighty mouse” of small blocks, beat in her chest with a steady rhythm. Her V8 pulse roared loud. When Dean rebuilt her after the crash, the one that nearly took his life and sent them, the Winchesters three, to the hospital John would never leave, Dean couldn’t save her heart. Not all broken things can be mended. And thus spaketh the Lord. Amen.

Dean liked loud things. Big things. He grew up to be the smallest man in a tall family, which may have been the cause, but even Dean never truly understood the workings of his own mind. His inner mechanisms were doubly opaque to anyone else, except for Sam, who never gave much thought to the Impala’s heart, and thus, thought nothing of it when Dean tore the cracked —but loyal, always loyal—thing out of her and slapped in a 502 big block in its stead. 

Her new heart beat louder and made Dean smile. In those dark days, smiles from him were rarer than ice in the desert, so she didn’t mind the change. Dean was a skilled surgeon, if a handsy one, and only her cowl tag revealed the secret that her current engine was a transplant. Her mighty mouse heart rusted away in the yard at Singer Salvage with no funeral rights. Lord bless thee and keep thee, 327 small block. Amen.

Her big block wanted to run, to go, in a way her first heart never did. The first time Dean started her up and put her into drive, she lurched forward and almost ran over Sam’s foot. Dean learned her new tricks swiftly enough, though, and soon they raced down the open highway again, her heartbeat lulling Sam into his first easy sleep in weeks. Dean saw it and loved the Impala all the more for it. Dean cherished every square inch of his car and her contents, from her shiny new engine to her freshly vacuumed floor mats to the holy water in her truck to the air Sam breathed steadily in and out with each slow, slumbering breath. The air in Sam’s lungs is Dean’s prayer. Keep him safe forever, oh Lord, said Dean Winchester. Amen.

Dean Winchester never thought of himself as a poet. In fact, if called one, he would have been insulted, or at least feigned insult. He didn’t think of himself as a smart man, either – better with his hands than with his brains, he’d claim. That might have been true, as such things are measured, but he most assuredly was a poet, and the Impala was his Edda (which he hadn’t read, but Sam had, twice). Through her, he composed an epic story of love, violence, and the gods in eight pistons and new chrome. He dedicated his opus to his only reader, sleeping with too-long hair falling over his face, cradled by fresh vinyl Dean had stretched over the seats with his own hands. A welding torch was his pen and the rubber mallet his rosary.

Winchesters weren’t liberal with spoken _I love you_s. Winchesters hugged when they survived a brush with death. They shed a single tear over a painful loss, or in Sam’s case many tears, but then they manfully wiped their faces dry and went about their business. Winchesters showed their feelings through service and good acts. They loved you by playing your favorite tape, even when it was their turn to drive. They loved you with your favorite road food, even if it made the Impala’s interior smell less than daisy fresh. They loved you with a plastic army man in the ashtray, because they could have pried it loose at any time, but they remembered the fat fingers of a little boy more precious than salt cramming that soldier in there. They loved you with seats adjusted for long legs, miles-long legs, because they loved those legs and every single bit attached to them. Sometimes, they loved you like a sharp knife loves, bone deep and deadly – love like razors. The Impala carried that love inside her, an ark of things Dean couldn’t say, but felt to his core. The love in his heart. Amen.

Her heart was big. Strong. Steady. It did Dean proud. It held Sam dear. It pushed her onward towards danger and death, but joyfully so, because she, too, showed her love through service. She would never fail them. She never had. She would run until her pistons could no longer hold her boys and keep them, and finally, when their fight faded, she would carry them to Valhalla to rest among the heroic dead, for the Impala so loveth the world and the Winchesters.

Amen, amen, amen.


End file.
